


love & college basketball

by maangoes



Series: romance on a budget in the time of hook-up culture [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29361858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maangoes/pseuds/maangoes
Summary: It’s a twenty-minute walk from the nearest konbini to Midorima’s apartment, and Kise has spent the entirety of it bitching about Aomine giving him the smallest hickey known to man on the cab ride over.
Relationships: Aomine Daiki/Kise Ryouta
Series: romance on a budget in the time of hook-up culture [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156841
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	love & college basketball

**Author's Note:**

> a continuation of tightrope but can be read on its own :3

It’s a twenty-minute walk from the nearest konbini to Midorima’s apartment, and Kise has spent the entirety of it bitching about Aomine giving him the smallest hickey known to man on the cab ride over.

“Can you see it now?”

“Stop fiddling with it, you’re making it worse.”

“How? How is it getting worse?”

It’s not, Aomine said that in the hopes that it would make Kise shut up. No such luck. Pivoting strategies, he throws an arm around Kise’s shoulders as they walk, drawing him close enough to kiss the top of his head. “Nobody is going to care.”

There was no point at which either of them had tried to keep it a secret — frankly, most people thought they had some kind of thing even before they’d really started. In all manner of mixed company, Kise sits on his lap, shoves his tongue down Aomine’s throat, and serenades him in an annoyingly beautiful singing voice with equally annoyingly horrible love ballads (though he does spend at least half of those looking at Kuroko.) Anyway, there’s no way he draws the line at a little bruise.

“I still don’t know what got into you,” Kise says, like he hadn’t been arching against Aomine in the backseat, threading his fingers through his hair and laughing as he egged him on.

In truth, it had been the cab driver who stared too long at the interlock of their hands and kept giving Aomine dirty looks in the rear view mirror. Kise had been too busy texting Kagami about the Lakers game to notice, but Aomine had, and since they were already stuck paying the fare, he figured there was no harm in making the ride as uncomfortable as possible for the bigot in the front seat.

He doesn’t tell that to Kise, though. Aomine knows it would upset him, even if he tried to play it off with arched-brow, devastatingly uninterested disdain.

“You look hot,” Aomine says instead, because that’s the truth anyway. It’s worth it to watch Kise roll his eyes and flush, shoving Aomine’s shoulder and drawing him back in in the same breath, like he can’t stand to stop touching him for even a second.

The party is fun. As much as he’d rather raw dog a beehive than admit he cares, it’s nice seeing Midorima every once in a while. With the exception of Akashi, he’s the member of Teiko hardest to draw out of his hiding hole, antisocial to a fault and generally resistant to being dragged into any sort of nonsense. Aomine suspects that this party was actually planned and executed by his effusive boyfriend from Shutoku, who Kise has called “stupidly beautiful” on multiple occasions.

Not too long after they arrive it becomes apparent to Aomine that this is going to be one of those nights where Kise drinks too much. Aomine switches to water and keeps Kise sitting between his legs and leaning back against him, comfortable enough that he won’t try to do some dumb shit like dance on the table. 

Admittedly it becomes a more challenging task when he disappears to play flip cup with Kagami for a bit, and comes back to find that Midorima’s boyfriend has put on some trashy Europop music. Aomine narrowly keeps Kise from a striptease by threatening to confiscate his Space Jam phone charm, which is the final failsafe. 

Kise ends the night on the floor of their bathroom at home, because he can’t actually hold his liquor. Aomine rubs his back and scrolls through pictures on his phone as Kise heaves the contents of his stomach into the toilet, then spends a whole 30 minutes brushing his teeth and washing his mouth out with Aomine’s Listerine, before finally slumping slowly against the wall closest to the door. 

He takes small sips of the lemon water Aomine warmed up for him. “That was not sexy,” he squeezes his eyes shut like he’s trying to wipe the memory.

“No,” Aomine agrees, fingers slipping up the hem of Kise’s shirt to trace the delicate jut of his hip.

Once he feels up to it, Aomine hauls him back to their room and helps him change for bed.

Kise says it softly as Aomine unbuttons his shirt, pushing it off to tug a larger, more comfortable one over his shoulders: “I love you.”

This is a new thing. Kise lets it slip when he drinks too much. Or when he’s half-asleep, rubbing slowly at the nape of Aomine’s neck. Also when they’re in the middle of brain-melting-out-of-his ears sex and Aomine is too preoccupied to dwell on it.

“Bed,” Aomine says simply, and begins the arduous process of wrangling Kise under the covers.

* * *

Aomine comes home to the smell of food preparation, which is usually not a good sign because Kise can’t cook for shit. Aomine also can’t cook for shit - he nearly burnt the place down trying to make honey toast two days ago - but at least he’s self-aware. 

It doesn’t smell like anything’s on fire, so Aomine holds off on pre-dialing an emergency number. He toes off his sneakers in the genkan and follows the sound of a shitty bubblegum pop song to the kitchen. As suspected, there is some sort of culinary effort underway. The countertops look more apocalyptic than usual.

“Hey,” Aomine greets, shucking off his jacket and draping it over a chair. 

Kise blows him a kiss and re-dedicates himself to... frosting, something?

Aomine comes up behind him to wrap an arm around his waist, still surveying the scene before him. Most of Kise’s clothes are very confusing to Aomine. Today he’s wearing some sort of undershirt made entirely out of delicate-looking lace, patterns of white flowers disappearing past the waist of baggy sweats that Aomine is reasonably sure are his.

“You made that?” Aomine asks, raising an eyebrow. He juts his chin toward the cake tin in front of them, which is a mess of drizzled chocolate and orange frosting.

“It fell apart,” Kise says mournfully, leaning back against Aomine. “It was supposed to look like a basketball.”

Aomine reaches forward to pinch a chunk of crumbled cake between his thumb and index finger. He pops it in his mouth and chews pensively for a moment. “Still good,” he decides, licking his fingers.

“Really?” Kise raises an eyebrow, skeptical. 

Aomine doesn’t answer, just wipes his hand on a dish towel and presses a kiss behind Kise’s ear, then along the smooth arch of his neck. “What’s the occasion?” he asks, lips brushing against a place he knows will make Kise’s spine shudder. 

There’s a pause that’s long enough for Aomine to know something is up. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Kise tilts his head to give Aomine better access.

“So tell me.”

“You’ll make fun of me.”

“Probably.”

Kise swipes his finger through a smear of frosting on the edge of the tin, popping it in his mouth to further stall the admission.

“It’s been six months, today.”

Aomine stills. “Six months since what?”

Kise fidgets. “Since you grabbed my ass at the movie theater.”

It takes Aomine a long moment to remember what he’s talking about, and then an even longer one to discern why that’s relevant or at all deserving of a misshapen basketball cake-lump. When he puts it together, his lips turn down in a frown. “Hold on. _That’s_ what you’re counting as the start of our relationship?” he asks, incredulous.

“Yes,” Kise says stubbornly.

“Not when I first kissed you?”

“I thought it was a friend kiss.”

“With friend tongue?” Aomine rolls his eyes. “What about when I first took you to dinner?”

“We went to KFC,” Kise says that like it’s self-explanatory. “I loved it, but the signals were not clear. Even when you bought me that candy ring for dessert.”

What kind of sucker buys someone jewelry and a six-piece on the first date, unless they were a total fucking goner? He wore his Jordans, too. Not even the knock-offs, his real fucking Jordans, taken out of the box for the first time. But he guesses Kise can be pretty dense when he wants to be.

Aomine doesn't want to think about it -- why it's so hard for Kise to believe that somebody wants him, that _Aomine_ wants him. It makes him want to apologize for something he can't put a name to, and he's already shit enough at apologies when he knows what he fucked up in the first place. There’s a moment of silence as they both pick at the cake.

“Anniversary, huh?” Aomine asks.

“Yeah.”

Six months. Aomine’s longest relationship, by five and a half months. Seems like cause for celebration. He hooks his thumb under the edge of Kise’s lace. “How do I take this off of you?” he asks, half-suggestive and half genuinely curious. 

"Very, very slowly.”

Aomine makes a quiet assenting noise in the back of his throat. “Better start now, then.” 

With his hand on Kise’s stomach, Aomine can feel the quiet shake of his laughter.

* * *

Kise has been in Milan for 6 days now and Aomine misses too many things about him to keep count. This is the longest they've been apart since Kise started calling Aomine his boyfriend, and they had a massive fight over something stupid right before Kise left, so he doesn't even have Kise's reliably annoying stream of texts to keep him warm. Plus, in different circumstances, he'd have gotten at least a couple of nudes by now.

They also -- never really had a conversation about what kind of boyfriends they were, which Aomine is starting to regret, considering Kise is presently surrounded by exorbitantly wealthy models and vapid socialites. He was like catnip to both.

Aomine doesn't want to call first, because calling first feels like admitting he was wrong, and while the details of their argument are a little muddled after the fact, he _knows_ he wasn't fucking wrong. 

Yet here he is, Googling 'what time is it in Milan' and dialing Kise's international number anyway. He can hear the whipping sound effect in his head and he ignores it.

Kise picks up on the first ring.

"I miss you," Aomine admits flatly, before Kise can say something that pisses him off.

“You do?” Kise asks. It sounds like he’s out right now -- there’s the muted noise of people talking and the rush of cars in the background of the call. 

“Yeah.” Aomine takes a breath. “So, whatever. This is me -- letting you win, I guess. I don’t really give a shit if it means we can talk again.”

A moment passes. Aomine presses hard on a bruise beneath his ribs. 

“I miss you, too,” Kise sighs.

“Have you fucked somebody else?” Aomine asks. He means for it to sound casual, but his voice takes on a heavy edge without his permission.

“No,” Kise says. He sounds offended that Aomine would even ask. There’s a tentative pause on the other end of the line. “Have you?”

“No.”

Indistinct shuffling noises. “Well, don’t.”

“You don’t either.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Kise parrots. 

Aomine is relieved that that conversation wasn’t more difficult. He hasn’t really thought about it up until right now, but upon brief reflection, he realizes it doesn’t change much. Kise is blond, stacked, and gorgeous - he’s basically the only person Aomine thinks about when he jerks off these days, and even the thought of being with somebody else right now is... boring.

“It’s two in the morning, for you,” Kise says, faint reproach in his tone. “Why are you up?” 

If Aomine closes his eyes, he can picture Kise’s expression start to soften, the hard line of his brow easing, and how he’d reach out to touch Aomine, maybe brush the backs of his fingers along the plane of Aomine’s jaw.

Aomine struggles to come up with something less embarrassing than the truth - that his mind won’t settle without Kise dragging blunt nails across his scalp, chattering mindlessly in his ear about practice, school, the little odds and ends of his day. Even worse, that he’s restless in the first place because he spent the last couple hours thinking about Kise getting felt up by some European pervert with a ridiculous name like Lars.

“You snore,” he says finally. “It’s like a white noise machine for me.”

“I wear nose strips.” Aomine can hear quiet amusement in his voice. “They don’t work?”

“No. Cute, though.”

“Oh, so you _really_ miss me.” If Kise’s phone had a cord, he sounds like he’d be twirling it around his fingers.

“Screw you.” But Aomine is helpless against a smile. “When do you get home again?”

“Another four days. Kagami is picking me up from the airport.”

“Fuck Kagami,” Aomine says, like that isn’t one of his best friends. “Why is he picking you up and not me?”

“Because you don’t wake up before noon on the weekends.”

“I would,” Aomine insists, suddenly struck with the petty urge to prove it.

“I can send you the info.”

“Good.”

“Okay. Good.” Kise’s voice sounds tinny and breakable through the static.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Aomine starts, and then he almost says something else, three words that leap from the center of his chest to the tip of his tongue, but he mercifully manages to bite them down at the last second. 

"Hold on, Daiki,” Kise interrupts. “Put the phone on the pillow next to you and close your eyes.”

Aomine frowns. “What?”

“Please just do it.” Kise’s eye roll is audible. “For me.”

Aomine shifts stiffly against the sheets, then starts to comply, even though they both know damn well it’s not for Kise. And even more annoying is that it works -- Kise starts talking about how much he hates the food, his least favorite designs, the most incompetent models he’s had to work with this week, and Aomine feels his eyes start to droop.

He wakes up the next morning with dried drool at the corner of his mouth and his phone completely dead. Turning his head, he stares in silent disdain at the alarm clock with pink bunny ears that now sits on his bedside table, and contemplates the fact that he is so, so fucked.

* * *

Kise is avoiding him. He didn’t wake Aomine up when he left this morning, and he’s been out of the apartment the whole afternoon. 

Aomine guesses this little performance has something to do with what day it is. Sometimes it’s like Kise’s trying to prove that he can care as little about these things as Aomine does, like they’re engaged in some sort of bizarre test of wills instead of a relationship. 

“I have a surprise for you.”

“I don’t know if you can call _that_ a surprise,” Kise says wryly.

Aomine bites his ear. “Idiot.” He swivels the stool so Kise is facing him, then holds out two fists. “Pick one.”

Kise’s eyes light up in amusement, smile twitching at the corners of his lips. He thinks for a second, then taps Aomine’s right hand.

Aomine turns his wrist and opens his palm. Kise leans forward to get a good look at the two strips of paper resting at its center. He squints, looks up at Aomine for a second, then glances back down again, clearly still processing.

“Harlem Globetrotters in Tokyo?” he asks, voice full of awe as he snatches the tickets from Aomine. “Are these fake?” He has the audacity to hold them up to the light.

“What the hell, no,” Aomine wraps an arm around his waist, briefly pressing his lips to the square of his jaw. “I bought them two months ago. When the dates were first announced.”

Kise is kissing him before Aomine can react, just as fast as he is, these days. Aomine flattens his palm against the small of Kise’s back to steady him, because he figures if he fell on his ass it would probably ruin the moment. Fucking ace at this romance thing.

“Thank you,” Kise murmurs, nose brushing against Aomine’s as he hovers close. Aomine’s collar feels warmer than usual, something pleasant rustling in the back of his stomach.

“Shut up,” he kisses Kise again, brief and close-mouthed. “Hold on.” He lifts his other hand up and opens his palm again, revealing one of those expensive-as-shit, pre-packaged truffles Kise likes.

Kise exhales a delighted noise and snatches that away, too, kissing Aomine’s cheeks, forehead, nose -- anywhere he can reach. He sits back down and starts unwrapping the chocolate, then takes a dainty bite.

“The rest of the box is in the bedroom. I ate a couple.”

“But you left my favorites?”

“Yeah.”

Kise pops the rest of the truffle in his mouth, chewing with the same self-satisfied expression he gets when he’s giving head. Aomine points this out and gets a slap on the stomach for his troubles.

“Well.” Aomine can’t actually bring himself to say it. Happy Valentine’s Day. Should’ve gotten a card or one of those lame candy hearts or something. “You know.”

If the way Kise’s smile brightens is any indication, it doesn’t seem to matter. He wraps heavy arms around Aomine’s neck and brings their lips together again. His mouth is sweet and warm, like chocolate raspberry.

* * *

Aomine repeats the words in his head: _I love you. Don’t make a big deal about it, or say something embarrassing._

Kise emits a quiet snore from where he’s dozing in the passenger seat. Aomine keeps a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, very narrowly resisting the urge to speed.

He’s having second thoughts about this spontaneous outing. He’d previously made plans to tell Kise at dinner tonight, but after waking up at 4 AM, tossing and turning for an entire hour, and feeling the urge to pussy out slowly climbing up his throat, he thought: fuck it. Anyway, in all of the corny bullshit romantic dramas Kise has forced him to watch over the past several months, there was always some asshole confessing their love at sunrise or sunset. He could be that asshole. 

So he promptly rolled over and elbowed Kise in the stomach to wake him up. In the name of romance. 

“Daiki,” Kise had murmured, Aomine’s name half-swallowed by a yawn. “It’s too early, just rub off on my back or something.”

It took a while for Aomine to convince him that this wasn’t about sex, and no, he wasn’t kidding, he wanted Kise to get up right now, and no, this wasn’t a life or death emergency, but Aomine would still drag his lazy ass out of bed if he had to.

Herding Kise into the car had been another struggle entirely, but Aomine managed. And now he’s driving to a park they both like, where they sometimes watch the sunset on evening runs. Sunrise is probably good, too. Aomine thinks.

By the time he pulls into the parking lot, the dashboard clock reads 5:57. 

Kise wakes up as Aomine is pulling the keys out of the ignition, straightening in his seat and turning curious eyes on their surroundings.

He seems unimpressed.

“It’s six in the morning, Aominecchi,” Kise whines. He tugs the sleeves of Aomine’s sweatshirt over his hands and rubs dramatically at his eyes. “Did you bring me out here to murder me?”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“What else is there to do in an empty field at _six_ in the _morning_?” He shoves half-heartedly at Aomine’s shoulder. “On a Saturday, too.”

Aomine belatedly realizes that Kise’s going to get hungry pretty soon, and he didn’t bring a single item of food. Usually the romantic drama assholes packed some sort of picnic. Lacking better options, he gets out of the car and checks the back, eventually finding some pre-packaged jerky shoved between the seats. Whatever. Good enough. 

He stuffs it in his pocket and forces Kise out of the warmth of the car.

The air is cool and still, the grass wet from the rain last night. Aomine wishes it was raining now. With his fingers closed loosely around Kise’s wrist, they walk in relative silence through the empty picnic tables and up the hill with the view of the city. 

Aomine comes to a stop at the crest, then hesitates for a moment, and hands Kise the jerky. Kise takes it and looks confused.

“So, there’s the sunrise.” Aomine gestures to the view, where the sky seems painted with blooms of pink and orange, the first rays of light peeking over the sunken line of the horizon. “And, I love you.” He pauses. “We can go home now.”

"What?” Kise asks, and of course his eyes choose this moment to get wide and alert.

“Nothing,” Aomine snaps. “I love you, let’s go home.”

A number of emotions pass over Kise’s face at a rate that makes them difficult to identify. He seems to settle on annoyed, which is a great relief to Aomine. “What’s with the jerky?” he asks, lifting it with a frown. 

“I didn’t pack a picnic,” Aomine explains. “You like jerky.”

Kise considers that for a moment, and then tucks it in his pocket. He looks at Aomine again. “You love me?”

Aomine tilts his chin up, needlessly defiant. “Yeah.”

“Really?”

“I’m not saying it again.”

Kise takes a small step forward, placing his hands on either side of Aomine’s neck. The corner of his mouth tips in a very tiny smile. “I love you too,” he tilts his face up for a kiss, soft and unhurried, the press of his lips like a balm for whatever random anger seems to be perpetually churning at the pit of Aomine’s stomach. Aomine kisses him back, arms tightening around his waist. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

“I knew that already,” he says, brushing Kise’s hair back with gentle fingers. 

Kise presses his face into the crook of Aomine’s neck. “If you ever wake me up at five in the morning again, I’m changing the locks.”

Aomine nods. That seems fair.

**Author's Note:**

> maangoes on tumblr, mobwifegetou on twitter


End file.
